she takes her name from her usual habiliment, which is black, and is frequently called the BLACK GODDESS, Callee being the common name for ink. On this fast also, he observes, worship and offerings are paid to the manes of deceased ancestors. The origin of this singular deity is perfectly in unison with her life and history. Arrayed in complete armour, she sprang from the eye of the dreadful war-bred goddess Durga, the vanquisher of dæmons and giants, at the very instant that she was sinking under their united assault; when Callee, joining her extraordinary powers to those of her parent, they renew the combat, and rout their foes with great and undistinguished slaughter. I cannot refrain from adding in this place, in corroboration of a former remark, that, according to Herodotus, the principal and favourite deity of the Scythians was a war-divinity, to whom that historian gives the appellation of Mars, To this deity they erected, in every precinct, a vast quadrangular altar, so vast as to cover three stades of land, consisting of an immense pile of wood collected into bundles; and, upon the top of the altar, they " See Holwell, part ii. p. 131, and the engraving of Callee, which cannot fail of exciting disgust and horror in the reader. placed placed a rusty scimitar of iron, deeply crim- The antients, indeed, seldom sacrificed men, except at some grand and awful crisis, when a nation was convulsed by the violence of earthquakes or desolated by the rage of pestilence, in seasons of gloomy despondency or in the exulting moment of success and triumph. The deeper the distress, or the brighter the triumph, the more distinguished, by birth and accomplishments, were obliged to be the objects selected for sacrifice. Neither the tenderest youth nor the loveliest beauty was spared; the priest sometimes expired by the wound of the immolating knife, and kings themselves were sa , Herodoti, lib. iv. p. 276. crificed crificed for the welfare of their subjects. It must still, however, be owned that the altars of Diana in the Tauric Scythia, and in Egypt, the more gloomy altars of Busiris, (tristes Busiridis ara,) and some others in the antient world, were proverbially infamous for the profusion of human blood by which they were contaminated. The mode of devoting to death the miserable victims was various. Some of them were strangled, and so immediately put out of their torture: others had the skull shattered by the violent blow of a mallet from the muscular arm of the priest others were stretched on the back, and had the breast laid bare by the stroke of a sabre, while the unfeeling VATES stood round, watching the tremulous motion of the convulsed limbs, and drawing cruel presages from the streaming of the vital fluid. The most dreadful and disgusting of all was that adopted by the Scythians, and described perhaps with aggravation by Herodotus.* They sacrifice," says that historian, " every hundredth man of their prisoners to the deity. They first pour libations of wine upon the head of the victim; they then cut his throat, extended over a chalice to receive the blood: they after 66 66 wards wards ascend the pile of faggots, and wash with the blood the erected scimitar, the emblem of the god. While this is performing by the priests above, those below, after having deprived the ́ wretched sufferer of life, with the sacrificial knife separate the right arm from the shoulder, which they hurl into the air, and leave the body to putrify upon the ground." It appears, however, as if the victim in India generally perished by fire or decapitation, or perhaps, I may add, inhumation; for, that they were no strangers to that practice, is evident from two figures exhibited in Mr Niebuhr's seventh plate, the heads of which alone are apparent, the bodies being interred quite up to the throat, and a rajah appearing in the sculptures above, as if sitting in judgement upon the criminals. The doctrine of the Metempsychosis, originally intended to act as a check upon this barbarous propensity, in time became basely perverted, and operated as a powerful incentive towards the continuance of these rites of human sacrifice, disarming anguish of its sting and the grave of its horrors. The Indians seem, like the Scythians, to have thought, that, in the future state, the splendour of retinue and the tender offices of domestic affection were absolutely necessary to the happiness of the de ceased, ceased. The account which Texeira gives of so many women and slaves burning themselves with their lord, the Naique or Viceroy of Madura, is confirmed in a great degree by what Mr Orme,* in his Historical Fragments, reports, that with Seevajee's corpse were burnt attendants, animals, and wives. Marco Polo informs us, that, in the island of Ceylon, a number of persons of quality, styling themselves "faithful to the king in this world and in the next," were accustomed to destroy themselves when he died. In Tonquin, according to Tavernier, many lords of the court are buried alive with their sovereign;" and Barbosa, who, with the two preceding authors is quoted by M. Renaudot in the Anciennes Rélations in proof of the fact which I am labouring to establish beyond dispute, asserts, that, in the Indies, particularly among the Naires, it was a custom for the great men in the pay of the king, when he died or fell in battle, to seek death by revenging his fall, or to lay violent hands upon themselves in order to bear him company. At the death of the Scythian monarch, 66 See Orme's Historical Fragments of the Mogul Empire, p. 126. + See Ancienne's Rélations, first part, in note z. p. 33, of the English edition. |